Few books I have ever read had such an impact on me as The World is Flat, by Thomas Friedman. In the book, Friedman talks of globalization with an emphasis on this 100 years.
To a lesser extent there are a number of videos on the Internet that expand on some of the concepts that Friedman discusses. At the November, 2007 school board meeting, the video Did You Know was shown. That video was derived from another one “Shift Happens”, which I suspect was just renamed so that it could be shown without controversy about the title. The one I have embedded below is “Shift Happens” mainly because I like the music in it more than the others. Content is basically the same.
The book and the videos bring up some important issues with our education system. On one hand it is apparent that we must have our schools teach students to think “out of the box”, be creative, and learn how to learn. On the other side, our teachers have to teach a curriculum that will allow students to pass state mandated exams, and pass national tests for college entrance.
The issue I have are the tests themselves.
There is a problem with many of our tests are as to who is being tested - the student, or the teacher (e.g. tests that are designed to show the effectiveness of a teacher)? Are we teaching what the student has learned, or what the student knows? Should our tests focus on specific knowledge or on general attributes, like creative thinking and problem solving? Should our tests be achievement, which measure what a student knows, or aptitude tests which are designed to predict how well test-takers will perform in future settings?
I don’t know – but what I do know is that our teachers are daily facing more and more challenges that are out of their control. The more I learn, the more I respect our teachers and administrators in the job and challenges ahead of them.
